Same question, second verse
Whig article sampling public reaction to State of Union speech: Person quoted in article says Obama claimed "unemployment would be 'twice as bad' without actions taken in 2009."
Obama: "Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed."
The Whig source's paraphrasing of Obama's claim is off by roughly 13 million people. [Corrected my math from an earlier version of this entry.]
Did the Whig have an obligation to correct the person's understandable but obvious misstatement? I think so.
Obama: "Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed."
The Whig source's paraphrasing of Obama's claim is off by roughly 13 million people. [Corrected my math from an earlier version of this entry.]
Did the Whig have an obligation to correct the person's understandable but obvious misstatement? I think so.
posted by Allthenewsthatfits at 1:23 PM
2 Comments:
I think that journalists definitely have the obligation to make sure that demonstrably inaccurate "facts" don't find their way into articles. Wouldn't it have been easier to just leave that person's quote out and find someone else who was a little better informed? I think this is a different situation than the letter to the editor discussion a few weeks back in regards to false statements.
That's a good point.
Last month's Atlantic had an interesting commentary on the subject of newspaper style, pointing out how conventionalized much of it is and how stale much of it has become as a result. One example the writer pointed out was the formula of "event happens --> find one person to speak positively about it, and one person to speak negatively," a formula that means you are basically handing over your credibility to whatever sources you can chase down.
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